have been ironic if he' d been a less com- passionate child. "Clothes?" the boy said. " 0 K " L . . d " L . k .., oom!s sa!. ! e a swimsuit? Does she go to work in a swimsuit?" "Are you O.K?" the boy said. Loomis was taken aback by the question. " M ....." h O d er e sa! . Theywalked along the beach, neither going into the water. Loomis enjoyed collecting rocks. The stones on the beach here were astounding. He marvelled at one that resembled an ancient war club. The handle fit perfectly into his palm. From somewhere over the water, a few miles south, they could hear the stutter- ing thud of a large helicopter's blades. Most likely a military craft from the Marine base farther north. Maybe he wasn't O.K. Loomis had been to five therapists since separating from his wife: one psychiatrist, one psy- chologist, three counsellors. The psychi- atrist had tried him on Paxil, Zoloft, and Wellbutrin for depression, and loraze- pam for anxiety. Only the lorazepam had helped, but with that hè d overslept too often and lost his job. The psychologist, once she learned that Loomis was drink- ing almost half a bottle of booze every night, became fixated on getting him to join A.A. and seemed to forget alto- gether that he was there to figure out whether he indeed no longer loved his wife. And why he had cheated on her. Why he had left her for another woman when the truth was that he had no faith that the new relationship would work out any better than the old one. The first counsellor seemed sensible, but Loomis made the mistake of visiting her together with his wife, and when she suggested that maybe their marriage was kaput his wife had walked out. The second coun- sellor was actually his wifès counsellor, and Loomis thought she was an idiot. Loomis suspected that his wife liked the second counsellor because she did noth- ing but nod and sympathize and give them brochures. He suspected that his wife simply didn't want to move out of their house, which she liked far more than Loomis did, and which possibly she liked more than she liked Loomis. When she realized that divorce was inevitable, she shifted gears, remembered that she wanted to surf: and sold the house before Loomis was even aware it was on the market, so he had to sign. Then it was Loomis who mourned the loss of the house. He visited the third counsellor with his girlfriend, who seemed con- stantly angry that his divorce hadn't yet come through. He and the girlfriend both gave up on that counsellor because he seemed terrified of them for some rea- son they couldn't fathom. Loomis was coming to the conclusion that he couldn't fathom anything; the word seemed ap- propriate to him, because most of the time he felt as if he were drowning and couldn't find the bottom or the surface of this murky body of water he had fallen, or dived, into. He wondered if this was why he didn't want to dive into the crashing waves of the Pacific, as he certainly would have when he was younger. His son didn't want to because, he said, hè d rather surf. "But you don't know how to surf," Loomis said. "Mom's going to teach me as soon as shè s good enough at it," the boy said. "But don't you need to be a better swimmer before you try to surf?" Loomis had a vague memory of the boys swim- ming lessons, which maybe hadn't gone so well. ''N 0," the boy said. "I really think," Loomis said, and then he stopped speaking, because the heli- copter he'd been hearing, one of those large twin -engine birds that carry troops in and out of combat-a Chinook-had come abreast of them, a quarter mile or so off the beach. Just as Loomis looked up to see it, something coughed or ex- ploded in one of its engines. The heli- copter slowed, then swerved, with the slow grace of an airborne leviathan, to- ward the beach where they stood. In a moment it was directly over them. One of the men in it leaned out of a small opening on its side, frantically waving, but the people on the beach, including Loomis and his son, beaten by the blast from the blades and stung by sand driven up by it, were too shocked and confused to run. The helicopter lurched back out over the water with a tremendous roar and a deafening, rattling whine from the engines. There was another loud pop, and black smoke streamed from the for- ward engine as the Chinook made its way north again, seeming hobbled. Then it was gone, lost in the glare over the water. A bittersweet burnt-fuel smell hung in the air. Loomis and his son stood there among the others on the beach, speecWess. One of two very brown young surfers in board shorts and crewcuts grinned and nodded at the clublike rock in Loomis's hand. " D d ' c " h 0 d 'C'\T U e, we re sale, e sa!. I ou can put down the weapon." He and the other surfer laughed. Loomis's son, looking embarrassed, moved off as if he were with someone else in the crowd, not Loomis. T hey stayed in Carlsbad for an early dinner at Pizza Port. The place was crowded with people whò d been at the beach all day, although Loomis recog- nized no one theyd seen when the heli- copter had nearly crashed and killed them all. Hè d expected everyone in there to know about it, to be buzzing about it over beer and pizza, amazed, exhilarated. But it was as if it hadn't happened. The long rows of picnic tables and booths were filled with young parents and their hyperkinetic children, who kept jumping up to get extra napkins or forks or to climb into the seats of the motorcy- cle video games. Their parents flung anns after them like inadequate lassos or pursued them and herded them back. The stools along the bar were occupied by young men and women who appar- ently had no children and who were attentive only to one another and to choosing which of the restaurant's many microbrews to order. In the corner by the rest rooms, the old surfers, regulars here, gathered to talk shop and knock back the stronger beers, the double-hopped and the barley wines. Their graying hair friz- zled and tied in ponytails or dreads or chopped in stiff clumps dried by salt and sun. Their faces leather brown. Gnarled toes jutting from their flip-flops and worn sandals like assortments of dry-roasted cashews, Brazil nuts, ginger root. Loomis felt no affinity for any of them. There wasn't a single person in the entire place with whom he felt a thing in THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 6, 2009 65